August 8 -- God Said ! -- Budapest

Many years ago I went through a time of personal and business disaster.  A Godly friend was helping me make sense of things.  He asked me why things had crashed.  I said, "because I was deceived."  I was thinking and meaning that some business colleagues had deceived me.  My friend asked me why I had been deceived.  At that point Holy Spirit spoke to me and I honestly answered, "because I wanted to be deceived.  It was the only way I could continue to be admired and thought of as the one close to being God."  If I had asked the hard questions and demanded answers, I would have been rejected and lost my position as the "worshipped one."  Over the years since that horrible revelation, I have dealt with many different deceived people.  Universally I find one thing.  In each case people continue to be deceived because they want to be deceived.  It suits their own purposes to maintain their deception.  Of course, satan and his demons are also involved, but everyone who honestly seeks Truth no matter the cost always finds Jesus.  And, in Jesus there is always deliverance from deception.

The Bible teaches that Jesus followers (His sheep) hear His voice.  (See Scriptures below.)  But the vast majority of people who think of themselves as Christians will tell you they have never heard Jesus speak to them.  How can this be? What has happened to these people?    

Well, let's eliminate from our conversation the ones who are not and never were actually Christians.  There are lots of people who have thought of themselves as Christians, who simply never were.  They may be socially acting like Christians are supposed to act.  They may be going to meetings and singing songs etc. etc.  But they have never turned away from their self-centered life.  They have never intended to surrender the final authority for all of their decisions to Jesus as the Lord.  For them the glory of their own logic and way of thinking is superior to having Jesus make decisions they are committed to follow.  I hope that does not describe you.

Turning our attention to the ones who actually have decided to follow Jesus as Lord, how can it be that they still think they cannot hear Jesus speak to them ?  Look at their most common experiences.  They first came to a meeting of some Christians because someone with whom they had a relationship brought them.  They sat in a nice row of people on pew or chair.  The only people they could make eye contact with were the ones up front.  Someone told everyone what songs to sing.  Someone told everyone what to do with their money.  And someone preached.  Then everyone went home.  The following week, the same things happened.  And the same every week, within six weeks they learned that the only ones who ever hear God are the ones up front.  This is continually confirmed because no one else is ever asked about what God has told them.  So, even though they receive Jesus as Lord, they have absolutely no expectation that God intends to speak to them.  Indeed there are major denominations who have an absolute doctrine that God no longer speaks to people.  How they can believe and teach this in light of also saying the Bible is true escapes my understanding.

So, the first essential for you to hear Jesus clearly is that you believe in Jesus and trust Him to be your personal Lord.

The second essential is for you to know that He wants you to hear Him and is speaking personally to you every day of your life.

Let us look for a bit at that first essential.  It requires you to believe in Jesus.  Often I find people mis-understand this concept.  In English we use the word believe in two very different ways. One way we use it describes a person's intellectual agreement with some fact.  This is the way the word is used in The Apostle's Creed and other statement of faith type documents.  It is also the way it is used to describe our expectations like: I believe it will rain tomorrow.  But, that way of using the word believe is very different from the requirement to believe in Jesus.  This use of the word believe describes a person's willingness to act in complete and utter reliance on the truthfulness and competence and trustworthy character of another person.  It can be seen in a child who believes in his/her father standing under the high tree limb saying, "Jump, I will catch you."  It is the kind of "believe in" practiced by a parachutist who jumps from an airplane wearing a chute someone else has said is packed properly.  In the US military it is a crime to make a false report.  This is because the lives of hundreds of thousands of people are at risk.  If a decision is made relying on a false report, many people might needlessly die or be injured. Thus, military people are trained to trust each other.  When we decide to believe in Jesus, we are trusting Him that He told the truth when He said He and God "the Father are one".  We are trusting the truth of His statement we "will never perish; and no one will snatch them (us) out of My (His) hand."  We are making a choice to believe whatever He says with total confidence.  This kind of "believe" is not an analysis based on all the accumulated evidence.  Not at all !  Rather it is a decision, a choice, a commitment, based entirely on our confidence in who has spoken not on what He has said.  As little children we sang a song, "Jesus loves me this I know for the Bible tells me so."  This is wonderful as far as it goes.  But, it is much more significant when I know Jesus loves me because He personally has told me so.  'I believe' is a statement of confidence in a person not of acceptance of a fact.

If you are going to carry on in depth conversations with Holy Spirit, Jesus, and/or Father God, there is one more bit of confidence that will be very important.  You will need to believe God rewards those who seek Him.  Thus, you can be sure God Himself accepts responsibility for His own communications.  He knows that we have no control over Him.  He knows we are continually assaulted by the deceiver.  So He must take the responsibility to ensure that when we seek Him, He rewards us by clearly communicating with us the things He wants us to know.  It takes only a few conversations with people who are intimate friends of Jesus to learn that everyone of them has the experience of God talking with us and then coming again and again to clarify the portions of His communication that we did not correctly understand.  But, do not deceive yourself on this.  God clearly knows the difference between your actual lack of understanding and your claims to not understand because you simply do not want to be responsible for what you were told.

So, let's review the essentials for hearing Jesus:

• Believe in Jesus as Lord.
• Know He wants to speak with you.
• Have confidence in Him and what you hear.
• Know He will correct your mis-understandings.

You are probably asking, "But what does He sound like ?  How can I recognize His voice ?" 

There is one time you definitely heard the Spirit of God.  That was when He invited you to receive Jesus as Lord and become part of the family.  There have also been many many other times.  The problem is you are also hearing many other voices.  There are of course the voices of other people.  Those are usually easy to recognize.  

Then there are the voices of satan and his demons.  Those voices are most often characterized by fear and guilt.  They make you fear God, failure, or embarrassment.  And they make you feel guilty about what you have done or have felt.  There is one more set of demonic voices of which you should also be aware.  These are the seductive voices that entice you by appealing to your desires for power, recognition, or possessions.  So these voices say things like:

• If you do that God will reject you.
• When you do that everyone will laugh at you; or everyone will think you are showing off.
• If you do that everyone will finally recognize you really are God's minister.

Then there is the voice of your own soul/spirit.  You desire to be comfortable, secure, and in control of what is going on around you. So this voice sounds like:

• If she smiles at me then I will go talk to her.
• I am not dressed right to say anything.  I better be quiet.

God's voice is always one of love.  He never leads His children by guilt because there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ.  And He never leads His children by fear because He is Love and perfect love casts out all fear.  Rather He leads by servanthood and by example. So, if you get to know Jesus, you will see He is constantly serving you and giving you gifts that empower you.  His voice is continually inviting you to join Him in an adventure.  The adventure involves doing things to love and serve people that are completely impossible if He does not remain involved.  So He might sound like this:

• Look at that sunrise I prepared for you; I want to fill you with peace this morning that will last all day.
• Wasn't my friend Peter a funny guy; I loved to laugh with Him.
• Do you see that person over in the corner ?  Would you go over and tell him I love him just like he is.
• See that woman who has the sore back ?  Let's go over and pray for her and heal her back.

Do you remember when you were a child and you were allowed to go outside to play on a warm summer day?  When you heard your parent call you for supper, you were not in doubt about who was calling or who was being called.  As you practice listening to God's voice, you will become just as certain about each of the voices of Father, Jesus, and Holy Spirit.  And you will find joy in responding to each of them.

His, thus Yours,

  Stuart

John 10: 14 - 30 (NASB)

I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me, even as the Father knows Me and I know the Father; and I lay down My life for the sheep. I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd.  . . . .                . . . .  But you do not believe because you are not of My sheep. My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me; and I give eternal life to them, and they will never perish; and no one will snatch them out of My hand. My Father, who has given them to Me, is greater than all; and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand. I and the Father are one.”

Hebrews 11: 6 (NASB)

And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.